Hearings January 25 on abortion stats and facility audit bills

New Hampshire legislators will soon introduce an abortion statistics bill, HB 582-FN, which will be considered by the House Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs (HHS) committee. The same committee will also consider HB 615-FN, requiring independent audits of reproductive health facilities. (The “FN” suffix indicates a fiscal note, and those letters may be omitted in references to the bills.) According to the House calendar released yesterday, the bills will have their hearings on Wednesday, January 25 at 2:00 p.m. for HB 582 and 2:45 p.m. for HB 615. Before heading to Concord, check the General Court website, gencourt.state.nh.us, for any updates or cancellations due to weather.

The hearings will be in the Legislative Office Building in Concord, rooms 210-211. See this blog’s Legislative Tool Kit for information about attending hearings and submitting testimony.

Action item: register your opinion on the bills online now, even days before the hearing, and your response will reach all committee members. Use the House Online Testimony form, which lets you record a simple “I support” or “I oppose” on bills. (I’ll be supporting them both.) You may submit written testimony, but it is not required on that form. Your name, position (support/oppose), and any testimony you submit online will be visible to the general public. On the Online Testimony page, enter “January 25” for the date and “House Health Human Services and Elderly Affairs” as the committee, and you will see a drop-down menu with a list of all the bills being heard by HHS that day. Click on the appropriate bill number and then follow the directions on the resulting screen.

Even if you cannot attend the hearing, the advance online sign-in is critical in order to get the committee members’ attention and to encourage the sponsors of the bills.

Regarding HB 582, New Hampshire is one of the few states that does not collect abortion statistics and report aggregate data (not personally-identifying) to the public and the federal Centers for Disease Control. I’m losing track of the number of years the House has considered and rejected this women’s health measure at the urging of abortion advocates. HB 582 is years overdue. Chief sponsor is Rep. Walter Stapleton (R-Claremont), joined by three co-sponsors.

HB 615 would ensure clarity in how Medicaid funds (which includes family planning funds) are used by abortion providers. From the bill’s official analysis: “This bill provides that state funds awarded to reproductive health care facilities shall be limited to the minimum amount necessary for participation in the Medicaid program. The bill also requires state contracts with certain reproductive health care facilities to include provisions indicating that state funds shall not be used to subsidize abortion and that the facility shall undergo an independent audit, the results of which will be provided to the executive council prior to taking action on the contract.” Chief sponsor is Rep. Jess Edwards (R-Auburn), and he is joined by seven co-sponsors.

An abortion agenda for NH

The New Hampshire Women’s Foundation counts “abortion rights” among its interests. One of the Foundation’s recent publications lists “Post-Roe policy priorities in New Hampshire,” with footnoted credit to the New Hampshire Abortion Access Coalition.

I take no credit for being psychic, but I called a few of these the day the Dobbs decision came down. You probably did, too. Remember, Dobbs did not recognize a right to life.

The following list of “post-Roe policy priorities” should inspire an interesting Q&A session with your local candidates for state rep and state senator. Any candidate not committed to resisting these “priorities” will be a candidate who advances them.

• “Pass proactive legislation to enshrine the right to access abortion in New Hampshire.” Translation: codify unlimited abortion via statute.
• “Amend New Hampshire’s Constitution to enshrine the right to access abortion in New Hampshire.” Codify unlimited abortion via constitution – and possibly by misuse of our constitution’s privacy amendment.
• “Repeal current abortion restrictions.” New Hampshire has exactly three statutory regulations on abortion: parental notification, a ban on partial-birth abortion (i.e. killing a child after the child is partially delivered from the mother’s body), and a 24-week limit with a eugenic-abortion exception. Goodbye to all that, if the Foundation has its way.
• “Address disparities in abortion care based on geographic location, including for abortion later in pregnancy.” Watch out for regulatory (executive, administrative) action on this in addition to statutory action. Open more abortion facilities? Force hospitals to provide the direct intentional termination of human life late in pregnancy? Whatever it takes, I suppose.
• “Support policies to ensure abortion and abortion-related care is covered for all patients, regardless of insurance.” Translation: force taxpayers to subsidize abortion via Medicaid. Again, watch for regulations that do what statutes can’t.
• “Increase the number of providers who offer abortion care.” Here’s one way: make health care providers see the intentional termination of human life as a normal medical procedure, and then stigmatize and sanction providers who push back.
• “Defeat anti-abortion legislation in the State House.” Translation: keep doing everything the abortion advocacy movement has been doing in New Hampshire since 1997. A sampler: oppose conscience protections for health care providers; challenge the First Amendment rights of peaceful pro-life witnesses; fight informed consent and statistics-reporting requirements for abortion; promote discrimination against people with disabilities by promoting eugenic abortion; make sure that infants who survive attempted abortion are not protected under law.

The state primary election this year is September 13. The time to find out where your local candidates stand is now. And an “R” next to your candidate’s name is not an answer.

Abortion providers are once again disappointed in the Executive Council

Today, the New Hampshire Executive Council voted 4-1 to reject family planning contracts with three abortion providers, while approving on 3-2 votes similar contracts with agencies that do not perform abortions. The Council gave thumbs down to the same abortion providers in September, on the same contract proposals.

The 4-1 vote was along party lines, with Republicans Joe Kenney, Janet Stevens, Ted Gatsas, and Dave Wheeler prevailing over Democrat Cinde Warmington. On the 3-2 votes, Councilors Gatsas and Wheeler were in the minority, according to The New Hampshire Union Leader.

A majority of the councilors saying no to the abortion providers aren’t doing so because they have a problem with family planning programs. Their issue is with the abortion side of the providers’ business. They know that giving x number of dollars to an agency for a specific task frees up other agency resources for other tasks.

“Shameful,” says the VP of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “We are outraged,” tweeted the NH Women’s Forum.

The Council’s vote appears to be consistent with state law, as passed in the trailer bill to the state budget that went into effect on July 1 (HB 2, chaptered final version, section 91:36; see subsections 3 and 4):

Any contract awarded to a family planning project shall contain all of the following provisions: (1) that no state funds shall be used to subsidize abortions, either directly or indirectly; (2) that the family planning project will permit the commissioner of the department of health and human services, or his or her designated agent or delegate, to inspect the financial records of the family planning project to monitor compliance with this section; (3) that at the end of each fiscal year, the commissioner shall certify, in writing, to the governor and council that he or she, personally or through a designated agent or delegate, has reviewed the expenditure of funds awarded to a family planning project under this section and that no state funds awarded by the department have been used to provide abortion services; and (4) that if the commissioner fails to make such certification or if the governor and executive council, based on evidence presented by the commissioner in his or her certification, find that state funds awarded by the department have been used to provide abortion services, the grant recipient shall either: (a) be found to be in breach of the terms of such contract, grant, or award of funds and forfeit all right to receive further funding; or (b) suspend all operations until such time as the state funded family planning project is physically and financially separate from any reproductive health facility, as defined in RSA 132:37.

Chapter 91:36, HB 2 as enacted by New Hampshire Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu, 2021

The PPNNE spokesperson has averred that there are no unanswered questions about how PP spends taxpayer money.

According to Kevin Landrigan’s Union Leader report, Governor Sununu expressed hope that the Council will reconsider once the statutorily-required audits are complete. Landrigan quoted the governor as saying “The fight isn’t over yet,” to which Councilor Kenney reportedly replied, “I believe it is.”

In advance of the vote, the Public Policy office of the Diocese of Manchester in an email had urged readers to contact their Councilors to urge a “no” vote on contracts with abortion providers PPNNE, the Equality Center in Concord, and Lovering Health. “Keeping state funds separate from abortion activities is an important public policy-– a policy that is especially appropriate in the context presented by these particular contracts, because abortion unquestionably should not be thought of simply as an element of family planning.” 

New Hampshire Right to Life also issued a public heads-up before today’s Council meeting. “Soon after the Executive Council members decided to uphold the law in mid-September, the NH abortion providers announced increased prices for family planning services on their poorest clientele…. The abortionists thought they could bully NH taxpayers into subsidizing their abortions by increasing prices for other services….As a public service, NHRTL responded to the price increases at abortion facilities for their low-income clients by publishing an interactive map with a list of health care centers and other helpful organizations for women and their families.”

If you’d like to send your councilor a polite message about the votes, here’s contact information.

State budget conferees restore abortion funding restriction

House and Senate conferees working on the New Hampshire state budget for 2022-23 have agreed to include a restriction on abortion funding, according to news reports. The compromise language adds a 24-week limit on abortions.

Senate committee strips abortion funding language from budget bill

As reported by Adam Sexton of WMUR, the New Hampshire Senate Finance Committee has voted to remove proposed state budget language requiring family planning contractors to keep abortion work financially and physically separate from contractors’ other business.

The House language rejected by the Senate committee was reported in this blog last month. Its stated purpose was “[i]n order to ensure that public funds are not used to subsidize abortions directly or indirectly.”

The House language was included in HB 2, the so-called “trailer bill” that is a companion measure to HB 1. Together, the bills will form the state budget for the biennium beginning July 1.

The disputed language is different from provisions included in past state budgets to prevent state funds from being used directly for elective abortions. Such provisions are similar to the Hyde Amendment in the federal Health and Human Services budget.

The Senate Finance Committee will eventually make a recommendation to the full Senate on HB 2, which is likely to contain over a hundred provisions applying to various budget areas.

House and Senate will eventually have to settle their differences before submitting a budget to Governor Chris Sununu by the end of June.